Q&A: September 17th, 2025

Crystal Tatko Asks
Are there any freshly read comic books and/or books that you thought were interesting/amazing? Or maybe some awful books that you wish you hadn't spent time reading?

I've been pretty lucky so far this year with what I've selected reading. Obviously the Perfect Dark books, but also really enjoyed my time with Rick Rubin's The Creative Act, There Are No Accidents, Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant, and The Catcher In the Rye.

Comics, I've been meaning to get back into, but just haven't made the time yet, I've bought a whole bunch these past couple months from the Thrift Store, including Vol's 1-7 of Preacher.

While I was killing time at a library waiting for a ferry on Salt Spring, I did start Ed Brubaker's Where the Body Was and was hooked enough to feel disappointed when I had to put it down halfway through and to hop on the boat.

So that's one I'd definitely call interesting. Books that don't grip me get dropped pretty quickly, so awful one's can't rob enough time from me to regret them.

Malik Von Hertzen Asks
Does 007 First Light seem promising to you?

To be honest, I haven't looked past the first minute of the demo they showed off. I generally like going into any art as blind as I possibly can, so that I don't spend most of the time subconsciously putting the equations together to figure out how do we get to what we've seen.

However, I'm rather relieved to see way more people commenting that they respect showing the game in a state that isn't completely polished, rather than misleading consumers with framerates and visuals the game doesn't actually achieve.

Michael Gross Asks
Tangentially related to your Perfect Dark Zero video: Have you ever played/seen a minigame system (hacking, lockpicking, etc.) that felt fitting for the game it was in?

I've played plenty that I didn't mind, but like Hbomber said in his Deus Ex video, the issue isn't that a mini-game can't be fun, it's that it can't be fun hundreds of times in rapid succession every time you're doing a task as basic as opening a door.

Whether it's mini-games, tyre-physics, or ray-traced engine bays, software in-general has such a problem of missing the forest for the trees, that in the case of mini-games, left us circling the woods for twenty years only to arrive right back where we started in the first place.

TL;DR - No.

Kelvin Kuang Asks
Have you watch the rest of David Simon/Ed Burns collaborations beyond The Wire such as Generation Kill, The Plot Against America and We Own This City and what others books would you like them to adapt into a show? From what I read, both seems to have a good ability of adapting the books into the TV's, with a interesting, if otherwise morally grey, subjects to think about.

Not yet, but I've definitely got them on the short-list, along with their precursor, The Corner.

Honestly, I knew about Generation Kill and always intended to watch it, but I never knew David & Ed were attached. Now I'm even more intrigued! Guess that explains how I saw Ziggy's actor is in the show.

There isn't a specific book I have in mind they should be attached to, but there's definitely an interest in me to take notes from The Wire and expand it to other, perhaps more "accessible" media. I've always adored and prefer it when a story makes the main-character not be the one, but one of many, and The Wire encapsulates this.

I don't want things like 007 to have constant scenes of bureaucrats evading their responsibilities, but I do want to see a wider lens of the world and it's most interesting people.

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